After it falls apart

Things fall apart. The wifi fritzes out on the last five minutes of your favorite show, the dog shreds the new couch, your child’s health screen comes back with more questions than answers…your home falls apart. If this were a Monty Python sketch, someone would be singing sweetly, “Always look on the bright side of life” while all hell breaks loose. Too bad, it’s not just a funny sketch. It’s your life. It’s our lives.

For a long time, I thought I could divine meaning from the ruin – find the pony in the pile of sh*t.

But then the nearly worst thing happened and there was no pony, no good reason…no meaning to it. It was criminal. Personal. And I broke beyond repair then hobbled back to Manhattan, the Konza Prairie and the people of peace to collect the broken pieces and recycle them into something next.

Not poetic.
Not helpful.
Nor with great meaning.
Just next.

I found a tiny grad-schoolish apartment that had room for all of us to Tetris into.
The kids and peeps came through often and I am so grateful.
Work found me and then I lost that due to an organization-wide restructuring.
Work found me again and I had a place to help and quietly…unhurriedly begin gluing bits of bits back together. It did not provide the means to sustain the Hobbit House apartment nor my frugal ways, but it did bring me back to life.
And then a new opportunity opened to work for a mission I whole-heartedly endorse, with people I respect and with means to save funds for rainy days and adventures.

And today. Today.

While spinning with one of my favorite pals this morning, I alternated between thinking I was going to die and the glee of pedaling all-out on a bike in good company.

Yoga with another pal last night had me giggling and sweating puddles of stress onto my mat.

Sweet and often laughter-filled real-time connections with the kids as they moto through their days. Peeps in kayaks, on porches and in pools. A fella who I respect, who shares my energy level, is kind, thinks I’m adorkable and who is solid and smart.

And room to wonder if I’ll start grad school again or trade out the Sweet Vibe for a car that’s a little less vintage and more covered in paint.

A few years ago, I had no idea this moment would come.

All I saw was the broken bits of a life that I’d worked so hard to salvage already and that was scattered in shards and dust too small to redeem. I may have glued those life bits together, but in the end, there was little to recycle and most to completely abandon.

The last 24 hours have offered so many reminders that when it all falls apart, all is not lost.

Time, tears, hard work, lethargy, laughter, framily and kayaks on the water will not fix what has been broken, but may provide some of the new bits and glue to create something not-yet-known…something that lasts.

To all of you who are putting on your traveling pants
or who are searching for the shiny bits you thought you’d lost,
I have no answers to why or to the meaning of the carnage.

I have a story of desolation and despair.

And today, a new story has finally emerged from beneath the sod and ruin to solidly grow into its own beauty at its own time.

Thank you for these affirmative, compassion driven, life embracing messages. They have helped sustain me through the undeniably worst time of my life. You have the courage not only to live your life but to see it clearly as an act of accepting fully the abundance that is the grace of creation before us. I wish I had your courage, your derring do.

On Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 3:07 PM everyday derring-do wrote:

> allielousch posted: “Things fall apart. The wifi fritzes out on the last > five minutes of your favorite show, the dog shreds the new couch, your > child’s health screen comes back with more questions than answers…your > home falls apart. If this were a Monty Python sketch, someo” >